Friday, February 20, 2009

Margaret Thatcher: Climate Change Pioneer?

One of the brighter and more thought provoking new Tory bloggers on the block is Richard Willis. He stood is Sutton & Cheam last time and is a Reading Borough Councillor. Today he has written a provocative blogpost asserting that Margaret Thatcher was the original climate change pioneer.

Thatcher, who got her degree in chemistry in 1947 from Oxford and went on to work as a research chemist before becoming a tax lawyer and, eventually, a politician, gave her first documented speech mentioning climate change at the Royal Society in 1988, almost a decade into her 11-year reign as Prime Minister. She told the assembled scientists that three changes in atmospheric chemistry 1. greenhouse gases, 2. the hole in the ozone layer and 3. acid emissions from power plants, warranted not just good science to resolve uncertainties but also government action to diminish pollution and promote sustainable development. She said:

“Even though this kind of action may cost a lot, I believe it to be money well and necessarily spent because the health of the economy and the health of our environment are totally dependent upon each other”.

On 8 November 1989 she addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on the matter. Read her speech and I suspect that some people will be very surprised. She was clearly speaking from personal understanding and deep concern.

In 1990 she addressed the 2nd World Climate Conference. Her comments included the following:

“…the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now. There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level.”

“We should not forget that CFCs are 10,000 times more powerful, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide as agents of global warming. But of the other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is by far the most extensive and contributes about half of the manmade greenhouse warming. All our countries produce it. The latest figures which I have seen show that 26 per cent comes from North America, 22 per cent from the rest of the OECD, 26 per cent from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and 26 per cent from the less developed countries.

These figures underline why a joint international effort to curb greenhouse gases in general and carbon dioxide in particular is so important. There is little point in action to reduce the amounts being put into the atmosphere in one part of the world, if they are promptly increased in another. Within this framework the United Kingdom is prepared, as part of an international effort including other leading countries, to set itself the demanding target of bringing carbon dioxide emissions back to this year’s level by the year 2005. That will mean reversing a rising trend before that date.”

As with so many other issues Margaret Thatcher was ahead of her time. She set the framework for the policies that the present Government is following. It would be nice to hear some of her critics giving her a little credit in this area. And next time that the Lib Dems claim that they are the only party with a long history of campaigning on this issue I shall point out that Margaret Thatcher was already doing it before their party came into existence!

Iain. I had the impression, perhaps wrongly, that you yourself don't believe in man-made climate change? If so, in your view, Mrs T would have been ahead of her time -- but wrong. I know you're quoting someone else, but approvingly.

I will definitely be wheeling this one out next time anyone near me starts on with their ill-informed Thatcher ate babies for breakfast, blah blah communities, mines and Argentina crap. Excellent find; bookmarking that blog.

The only reason the Left hate Margaret Thatcher so much is because of their constant wallowing in victimhood. I still hear people complaining to this day about Thatcher closing down the mines - get over it, for crying out loud!

I was born in the 1980s myself, so I don't know what exactly life would have been like under a Thatcher government. Depending on whom you talk to, it was either paradise on earth or it was like living under a despotic female dictator. Doesn't seem to be any in-betweens as far as Thatcher is concerned.

The moment that the Left wing admits that Thatcher wasn't all bad is the day I will begin to listen to them seriously once more.

What most in the Labour Party and indeed many in the country do not know is that the MT was a serious scientist, studied Chemistry in the labs of the great Dorothy Hodgkins, the Nobel Prize winner who produced the vitamin B12 structure. I am not surprised by her lecture at Royal Society.

The difference between Mrs T and the current batch of politicians is that she decided what to do based on evidence. The professionals today decide what's popular then claim to be "passionate about it".

The case on CFC and the ozone layer was well made. The man's to blame warmist one is on far shakier ground, as has since been proven.

The problem with the climate change debate is often the unqualified and the naive.

What we need is a return to scientific scepticism and an acknowledgement of the massive holes in our knowledge and understanding. I think Mrs T would have backed that also before destroying the West's economy of partial and conflicting data.

Of course, the other lady to head a major European government, Angela Merkel, worked as a physicist. It is interesting that politicians of the right who know something about science don't have a problem with man made climate change!

As an historical note, Neville Chamberlain was a metallurgist, one of the few PM's not to have gone to Oxford and probably the first to have a scientific background.

Tis not that those sceptical, or even contemptuously dismissive, of this lunatic-fringe branch of pseudo-science, so favoured by the Marxist Tendency, do not believe in "man-made climate change". That man has, for a long time, been affecting the composition of our atmosphere, and so influencing climate, is incontrovertible.

Norman "Dorothy Hodgkins, the Nobel Prize winner who produced the vitamin B12 structure"

Just a wee correction. Hodgkin was an X-ray crystallographer and elucidated the structure of vitamin B12. The 'production' as in total synthesis was by the great Robert Burns Woodward and Albert Eschenmoser.

More importantly Hodgkin was robbed her due credit in the elucidation of the structure of DNA. Crick and Watson owe a lot to her work.

Baroness Thatcher is a very able, honourable woman and was a great Prime Minister; but there was a political context to these remarks - her determination to wean Britain off coal and decisively end the days when democratically elected government could be held to ransom by the National Union of Mineworkers. She had not only seen the Heath administration brough down by the miners; but had herself in 1981 been forced to climb down rather than risk a dangerous confrontation with the NUM - preparing thereafter astutely for the Last Battle of 1984-1985. These remarks and this strikingly early assertion of the global warming/CO2 hypothesis must be viewed by that political prism. It is only a hypothesis; it has, these days, all the trappings (and the intolerance) of a religion and a Thatcher endorsement should not close our minds to other and serious arguments anent climate change.

No, I wasn't pushing a particular line here, just querying Iain's apparent shift in attitude from being a full-scale 'denialist' (useful word) to apparently approving Mrs T's statement of the opposite view.

I wouldn't contest your view. Anyway, since any measures will be ineffective, we have no choice but to wait and see. (But I'm glad I'm old.)

I recall Lady T speaking quite forcefully for lean-burn engine technology in the early 1980's.

She eventually lost the argument (even though she was right) and we abandoned a technology in which we were the world leaders for the short-sighted EU/American favoured catalytic converters and highly toxic unleaded petrol.

The news that my most treasured leader Margaret Thatcher was the original global warmingmonger is a sever blow to someone who has grown skeptical over the years.Yes, I can see her words coming as a blow to the Thatcher-phobes, but I also recall commentary that she also saw 'climate change' as a justification of nuclear power, which would weaken the hands of the coal miners.I think this point was made in the Great Global Warming Swindle, but Thatcher's views on global warming need further investigation.Indeed, I wonder if she holds such views today.We should remeber that the campaigns against global warming represent the most concerted attack on capitalism since communism.I will be blogging as much over at Barnsley Bill later today.

Well, yes Will, tthe Greens did well then.I guess the Lawson boom was so strong then Britain could then afford Green policies, just as Germany had a strong Green Party before many other countries.Now times are hard, I see Britain turning to the BNP.

Mrs. Thatcher could no more get everything wrong than she could get everything right. She was PM in a world that was changing rapidly, taking over when Britain no longer had effective control over its own destinies. Much of what happened was going to happen in any case one way or another.

Iain, she may have been right in this case but it still doesn't make me feel "she did any good". How did her saying this change anyone's views ? Sadly your party is full of people who totally disagree with her views.

Iain Dale, not sure but I think the second speech link is from 1990 when she addressed the 2nd World Climate Conference - I know an excerpt is then posted but the way your post reads it looks like the "speech" link is for the 8 November 1989 (General Assembly of the United Nations)

That said the 2nd World confernece speech was only 2 weeks before the leadership contest and only 5 days after Geffory Howe resigned...what a Lady!

The point is nothing has happened since that date and with India and China going full blast it got worse - but world temps are lower now than 10 tears ago and 1938 is still the hottest year on record - even though records do not go back far enough to be meaningful. Its perfectly possible to have a theory about global warming 20 years ago but in that time sea levels have not budged, Antarctic ice is thicker than ever and a satellite which had been reporting thinner ice in the Arctic has had to only just now be taken off line because of a serious fault.

So the lesson is even Mrs T can get things wrong - she even agreed to the Single Market.

And ex-apprentice is right. If positive feedback, which warmists like to use to justify their apocalyptic claims, were likely then it would have happened in the past and of course it has not and there are many instances of higher levels of CO2 in the past.

You know it is possible to viscerally hate Thatcher, as I still do, and still admire her in many ways. Hey, I even think, as an indubitably historic figure, she should be given a state funeral.

She was clearly very intelligent. She often stood her ground. She was always a model of poise. Her government responded well to AIDS, largely thanks to Norman Fowler, but also thank to her sense of practicality about gay men (after all one of her ministers, Lord Avon was an early victim).

But she detested the working class, pushed many on to non-working benefits, and she hated the railways. She engaged in the wholesale deindustrialisation of this country (compare our output to modern France or Germany.)

And don't forget her chemical contribution to something that many people in the UK use regularly...

...soft scoop ice cream.

They found a way of stabilising the ice cream emulsion whilst incorporating about double the amount of air as normal ice cream. So the ice cream could be carved even when cold; and (the manufacturers particularly liked this bit), because ice cream is sold on volume not weight, it meant less ingredients were needed and profits were higher.